The Coffin Dancer

risky.”
    “But what’s life without risk?” the Dancer asked playfully. “Makes it all worthwhile, don’t you think? Besides, when we were together I built in a few . . . let’s call them countermeasures, so that he’d hesitate to shoot me. Latent homosexuality is always helpful.”
    “But,” Rhyme added, piqued that his narrative had been interrupted, “when Kall was in the park, you slipped out of the alley where you were hiding, found him, and killed him . . . You disposed of the hands, teeth, and clothes—and his guns—in the sewer interceptor pipes. And then we invited you out to Long Island . . . Fox in the henhouse.” Rhyme added flippantly, “That’s the schematic . . . That’s the bare bones. But I think it tells the story.”
    The man’s good eye closed momentarily, then opened again. Red and wet, it stared at Rhyme. He gave a faint nod of concession, or perhaps admiration. “What was it?” the Dancer finally asked. “What tipped you?”
    “Sand,” Rhyme answered. “From the Bahamas.”
    He nodded, winced at the pain. “I turned my pockets out. I vacuumed.”
    “In the folds of the seams. The drugs too. Residue and the baby formula.”
    “Yes. Sure.” After a moment the Dancer added, “He was right to be scared of you. Stephen, I mean.” The eye was still scanning Rhyme, like a doctor looking for a tumor. He added, “Poor man. What a sad creature. Who buggered him, d’you think? Stepdad or the boys in reform? Or all of the above?”
    “I wouldn’t know,” Rhyme said. On the windowsill the male falcon landed and folded his wings.
    “Stephen got scared,” the Dancer mused. “And when you get scared it’s all over. He thought the worm was looking for him. Lincoln the Worm. I heard him whisper that a few times. He was scared of you.”
    “But you weren’t scared.”
    “No,” the Dancer said. “I don’t get scared.” Suddenly he nodded, as if he’d finally noticed something that had been nagging him. “Ah, listening carefully, are you? Trying to peg the accent?”
    Rhyme had been.
    “But, see, it changes. Mountain . . . Connecticut . . . Plains southern and swamp southern . . . Mizzura. Kayntuckeh. Why’re you interrogating me? You’re Crime Scene. I’m caught. Time for beddy-bye. Endof story. Say, I like chess. I love chess. You ever play, Lincoln?”
    He’d used to like it. He and Claire Trilling had played quite a bit. Thom had been after him to play on the computer and had bought him a good chess program, installed it. Rhyme had never loaded it. “I haven’t played for a long time.”
    “You and I’ll have to play a game of chess sometime. You’d be a good man to play against . . . You want to know a mistake some players make?”
    “What’s that?” Rhyme felt the man’s hot gaze. He was suddenly uneasy.
    “They get curious about their opponents. They try to learn things about their personal life. Things that aren’t useful. Where they’re from, where they were born, who their siblings are.”
    “Is that right?”
    “That may satisfy an itch, but it confuses them. It can be dangerous. See, the game is all on the board, Lincoln. It’s all on the board.” A lopsided smile. “You can’t accept not knowing anything about me, can you?”
    No, Rhyme thought, I can’t.
    The Dancer continued. “Well, what exactly do you want? An address? A high school yearbook? How about a clue? ‘Rosebud.’ How’s that? I’m surprised at you, Lincoln. You’re a criminalist—the best I’ve ever seen. And here you are right now on some kind of pathetic sentimental journey. Well, who am I? The headless horseman. Beelzebub. I’m Queen Mab. I’m ‘them’ as in ‘Look out for them; they’re after you.’ I’m not your proverbial worst nightmare becausenightmares aren’t real and I am more real than anybody wants to admit. I’m a craftsman. I’m a businessman. You won’t get my name, rank, or serial number. I don’t play according to the Geneva convention.”
    Rhyme could say nothing.
    There was a knock on the door.
    The transport had arrived.
    “Can you take the shackles off my feet?” the Dancer asked the two officers in a pathetic voice, his good eye blinking and tearful. “Oh, please. I hurt so much. And it’s so hard to walk.”
    One of the guards looked at him sympathetically then at Rhyme, who said matter-of-factly, “You loosen so much as one restraint and you’ll lose your job and never work in this city